Overview, History & Goals

Overview: The Cottonwood Institute’s core program is called the Community Adventure Program (CAP). The CAP is a unique academic experience offered to active, socially conscience, environmentally aware high school students and is available for high school and college credit. CAP is a coed, semester-long program designed for adventurous students who want to practice outdoor skills, discuss and debate local outdoor and environmental issues, develop deeper friendships with their classmates, and who want to make a positive impact in their communities. The Community Adventure Program teaches students essential camping and wilderness survival skills necessary to comfortably and competently explore the outdoors, while providing them with the tools and resources to tackle important environmental issues affecting their communities in order to help change the world. The Community Adventure Program has received Rave Reviews from students, parents, teachers, administrators, and members of the Boulder community.

Through active participation in the Community Adventure Program, students spend their time developing essential camping and wilderness survival skills, going on hikes, preparing for three overnight camping trips per semester, identifying local environmental issues, choosing an environmental issue that they are passionate about as a class, collaborating with local community organizations, and designing and implementing a student-directed Action Project as they explore sustainable win-win solutions to address their environmental issue. CAP introduces students to the concept of environmental sustainability and teaches them specific ways to reduce their environmental footprint both in the back country and throughout their daily lives.

The Cottonwood Institute is committed to collaborating with public, private, charter, independent schools, and community organizations to make this unique program available to other high school students in the Colorado Front Range. Please visit the New Vista High School Class Website or the P.S.1 Charter School Class Website to get a sense about what we do on a day-to-day basis.

If you would like to find out how to bring the Community Adventure Program to your school or organization, please call us at 303.447.1076, or Email Us and we will be happy to assist you.

Award Winning Program: The Community Adventure Program won the 2006 Environmental Education Award for Excellence in the Citizen and Community Category from the Colorado Alliance for Environmental Education (CAEE)!

Goals: The Community Adventure Program has four primary goals. Through outdoor education, environmental education, and service learning, CAP seeks to inspire high school students:

1. How to change the world through civic engagement and community involvement.
2. To develop essential camping and wilderness survival skills.
3. To increase an awareness of environmental stewardship, sustainability, and how to reduce their environmental footprint.
4. To develop life skills including project management, logistical coordination, leadership, teamwork, and communication skills.

Program History: In the summer of 2003, Ford Church approached New Vista High School about implementing the Community Adventure Program. Rona Wilensky, Principal of New Vista, gave Ford the opportunity to teach this unique program and was extremely happy with the results. Ford was able to generate a genuine rapport with students and the Community Adventure Program was an instant hit with students, parents, administrators, and community members.

Students in the pilot program decided that they were most passionate about exploring the aesthetic and environmental impacts of dog feces in Boulder County Open Space and Mountain Parks. They were furious with careless dog owners who let their dogs go wherever they wanted and were even more disgusted with pet owners who would take the time to bag their dog’s feces and then leave it by the side of the trail. Students decided to conduct research to determine exactly why dog feces were harmful to the environment and proposed a sustainable solution that advocated pet owners to compost their pet’s waste.

By the end of the class, students wrote an article called “The Scoop On Dog Poop” to educate their community about the aesthetic and environmental impacts of dog feces. This article was published in the Daily Camera, the Boulder Weekly, the Sierra Club Newsletter Peak and Prairie, and read on the air on KGNU 88.5fm. The Community Action Project gave students a sense of accomplishment and showed Boulder County that New Vista High School students cared what was going on in their community.